The Paralysis Paradox

I had quite a crappy day yesterday. It was one of  those days where at the start I wanted to do loads of things, I wanted to move forward, I wanted to achieve something, and at the end of the day I'd done exactly nothing.

One of the causes was a technical issue with iTunes - I basically had to de-install and reinstall it, and my computer's super slow, so it took about three hours and truckloads of frustration.

The other thing, though, is that sometimes this project I'm on can be really exhausting. I'd call it job hunting, but that's not even really what it is at this stage. I'm not looking for a paid job - I'm looking for ways to build up enough experience to eventually get the paid job I want. You'd think that's easier, but it's really more difficult, because there are no prescribed routes to take, no five-step plan you can follow. It's a constant search, a never-ending question. If I do this, will it help me? Will this take too much effort and time for too little result? Is anything I'm doing getting me anywhere at all?

That last question is the most frustrating one. When you're applying for opportunities, or trying to gain online skills, or researching companies, you're spending a lot of time without seeing any direct result. That makes it hard to stay motivated at times, and it also makes it incredibly difficult to explain to other people what it is you're doing. I find I easily get annoyed when people ask me what I'm up to, because there is no simple answer at the moment. Yesterday I got so frustrated I ended up doing nothing at all and just feeling stupid.

It's a paradox. I chose to build my own path this year, to do something different, to stop studying and find other ways of learning. I thought that would be very exciting, and it is. But every now and then the insecurity that comes along with it is too much, even for me. It can become very paralysing instead of motivating.

I guess that's just part of the whole learning experience though - we all end up in unpredictable or insecure situations in our lives at times, and we need to deal with them as best we can. Sometimes I just really wonder why I deliberately chose to put myself in such an incredibly undesirable situation. I'm starting to see why people might think I'm mad.

Luckily, there's still a little voice in my head that says, "Prove 'em wrong". It just needs to yell a bit louder sometimes.

Cardiff II: to BBC or not to BBC

On Thursday it was finally time for the BBC Get In event, which was my excuse for coming to the UK and Cardiff, and something I was very excited about. I'd read a bit about the previous session in Salford, so I knew more or less what to expect: some info on the Journalism and Production Trainee Schemes and how to apply for them, a talk with some of the current or past trainees and an opportunity to ask questions, and then a creative exercise about generating ideas for television.

The first thing that struck me is how nice everyone at the BBC is. Everyone who spoke at the event was really friendly, encouraging and often hilarious too. It made for a really relaxed atmosphere, which made it easy to ask questions and to come up with ideas. The people there were all really fab. I thought the workshop at the end, during which we were divided into groups and asked to develop an idea for a television programme in several steps, was the best part - it was really inspiring, and a great way to get started with pitching ideas, even if you don't have any experience. I'll write a more detailed post of what we did later this week.

The greatest thing about the event for me, was that it showed me what I want to do. Up until now I was looking for work experience across different sectors - admittedly, I was shopping around - but BBC Get In made me realise what I really want.

I think a good TV programme needs to tell a great story in an entertaining way, engage with its audience, and be relevant to the social, cultural and political environment in which it functions. Developing a programme like that is challenging and requires great team effort, a lot of motivation and loads of creativity. That just sounds like the perfect job description to me. Coming up with an idea on your own is great, but being able to share it with others, to continually develop it and make it better, and to share the result of your efforts with an audience is a completely different thing, and probably infinitely more rewarding. And that's what I want.

I guess that kind of changes the point of this blog, and the point of the rest of my year, really. It means I'm no longer searching for what I want, but instead I'll be searching for how to get there. I can't wait to get started. Bring it on.


PS. Many thanks to everyone at the event for being so inspirational and generally brilliant!

Cardiff I: When in doubt, give people food.

I gave up on blogging from my phone after two days because it takes ages and is highly annoying, so be ready for a series of retrospect posts here!

On Wednesday, I travelled to Cardiff by train, but first I went to have breakfast with a lovely Australian girl called Rose. It was nice getting to know someone after two days of wandering around alone - not that I mind travelling on my own, but it was good for a change.

In Cardiff I met an American girl called Bianca, who just flew in from New York and was about to start studying in Swansea for a semester. Amazingly, it was her first time out of the States, and the first time she'd been on a plane. I can't imagine going to live so far from home if you've never been outside of your own country - even if that country is the United States of America. I have to admire her for not being afraid. We explored the town together for a bit. It was a day full of new people and places - I like those days. 

The best thing about Cardiff was easily the Riverhouse Backpackers hostel, though. I've never seen anything quite like it or met such nice people as the owners. I'm not even going to start praising it here - if you ever go to Cardiff, just go there. It's brilliant. I'll just give you this quote from the owner Charlie, which I think I will adopt as my life's motto: "When in doubt, give people food!"

Good times in Cardiff. I'll need to go back there sometime to see some more of the place.

In the meantime: here's that video from Hampstead Heath I couldn't upload last week. Sorry for the awful quality, but I'm sure you get the idea.

London II

At the hostel today, I met a guy who got a job interview call at 8 in the morning. He was summing up where he'd lived to the interviewer - if I recall correctly it was Singapore, Italy, India, Finland and now London. When I asked him how the interview went, he said it didn't really matter because he was probably going to Denmark anyway, where some friends had offered him a job. "Everywhere is the same, so it doesn't really matter where I live," he said. "The buildings are different, the streets are different, the climate is different, but people's mentality is the same everywhere."

I didn't know what to say to that. I thought I was an experienced traveller, but I felt a little lost at those words. I'm still not sure whether I agree.

I went for a beautiful walk this morning. Hampstead Heath is one of, if not the most amazing park in London, but it's a bit out of the way for most tourists - it's not on the standard maps, I had to get an A- Z guide to actually find it on a map. But that also means it's relatively quiet. Most of all, it has the greatest view over London you could possibly imagine. I couldn't get the video I made to upload from my phone, but here are some photos to give you an idea.

View from Parliament Hill towards Highgate. The view toward Central London was a bit too foggy for a good picture. 

London I

It'll be fine, she said. Surely I can sleep on the bus, she said.

Yeah right. Kind of forgot border control, getting on and off a ship, and the fact that you just generally don't sleep on busses. If you want to get to London in one piece, don't go by bus. Not if you're going from Brussels anyway.

The upside is that I could compensate for the unpleasant night with breakfast at the V&A. I think I'd be willing to spend another night on a bus for this.

Express yourself!

Thanks to a friend, I came across this little gem today:

I think that makes for a brilliant little lesson there. I've been experiencing some trouble with self expression lately, be it on a very different subject: job applications. There are loads of great tips for cv and cover letter writing to be found online (check out The Guardian Careers, GoThinkBig, and BBC Careers), but in the end a lot of them come down to: be honest, express that you are passionate and motivated, and it'll be fine. 

Now that's exactly what's so difficult when applying, I can tell you. When I'm writing about any subject that interests me, I think I'm reasonably good at bringing my point across in a way that captivates people. However, when writing for a job application, with specific questions to answer, a way-too-low word limit, and my English that needs to be perfect, it's just not that easy. There are so many things you need to take into account and so many doubts keep popping up in your head, because there's quite a lot at stake. It's easy to let all that paralyse you. 

So I'll try a new strategy today: write as if I'm defending a super important point I've been trying to make for ages, and ignore word limit and style. Then edit afterwards. And worry less, most of all. In the end you can only do your best! (All sing with me: And the moooost you can eeeever doooo, is the beeest you caaaaan. Oohooh.) We'll see how it goes!

PS. If you need a bit of instant happiness: listen to the song I nicked the title from for this post! Doot-doot-do-do-doot!

After the rain

Eh. Did I say last time that I was gonna post more regularly? No? Good. Because I didn't. Yeah. Sorry.
I really need to set deadlines for myself, or start making lists, or something! I'll make that my late new year's resolution.

In my defense, it's been a really busy week. I took on a five-day temp job to earn some money. I will spare you the details (it involved a scanner and loads of invoices. Yeah.), but when I spend the whole day behind a computer, I just don't feel like turning mine on when I come home to write a blog post. (Also, with a job like that, there's really nowhere to get inspiration from, so maybe we should all be happy about that.)

Then in the weekend I went out, and my bag got stolen, yay. Then I went to the police station, they retrieved my wallet with most of my stuff but no debit/credit cards or keys, really yay. Then I had to go to the dentist. Very un-yay.

BUT there's good news too: I'm going to the UK on Monday! Yay yay yay! I managed to get myself a ticket to the BBC GetIn event in Cardiff, which is basically a big info session about the BBC Trainee Schemes and the Talent Pool. I'm very excited about that indeed! And since it seemed a bit stupid to travel all the way there (by BUS, because the Eurostar is damn expensive) to stay only one day, I'm spending the rest of the week in London. YAAAAAY! Compensates for the crappy weekend!

I'll try to do blog updates from London/Cardiff, but it's gonna be from my phone, so apologies in advance for crappy layouts and all that. If you want to follow my travelling adventures, in this case Instagram might be the best place. Find me here:  (or by the name of Mayasounds, of course).

In the meantime: still trying to finish my Work Experience application for the BBC too. It's so hard. Ugh.

Why UK?

You may wonder why exactly I've chosen to look specifically in the UK at the moment. The reasons are manifold, here are the principal ones:

1) The UK is awesome and I would love to live/work there for the rest of my life (at least I think so right now), so why waste more time in Belgium?

2) I love a change of environment every now and then. It makes me creative.

3) They do short work experience placements, which is exactly what I want right now. I haven't found anything similar in Belgium so far; it's all internships here, and they are usually long.

Can't learn as much if the placement is too short, I hear you say? Not entirely true. In my opera house internship, I learned loads in the first month, and hardly anything in the last three, because the tasks just started to repeat. That's why I'd prefer several short placements over one very long one - which only means I'm making things more difficult for myself, but hey, I'm still a woman right.

4) Any opportunity to improve my English is most welcome. I would especially like to pick up some kind of a stable accent at some point, instead of the current situation where I adapt my accent to whoever I'm talking to (which, oddly, causes Americans to think I'm Irish, Irish people in Ireland to think I'm American, Irish people abroad to think I'm Irish, and Polish people to think I'm taking the piss out of them).

5) Tea and scones. That is all.

What's next?

Happy New Year one and all! I took a bit of time off to relax after finishing my last internship, and obviously I was too lazy to even write a blog post in that time... Apologies! Here it is at last.

So what's next?
Nothing definite so far. I've been on the lookout for my next job for a while, but unfortunately I've had very little time, a lot to do, and Christmas in the way. To complicate matters a bit for myself, I've also decided to look for work in the UK this time, which means translating my CV to English and writing my cover letters in English, also pretty time consuming when you want things to be perfect.

I am mainly searching in the media business. Top of the list is - of course - the BBC. I've been keeping an eye on their opportunities for a while - they have a really interesting work experience programme, for which applications happen to open tomorrow. Of course I know I am aiming pretty high here - I estimate they receive about 8000 applications per position or thereabouts. But so be it - if you don't aim high, you can never hit high, right?

I'm also looking around for other opportunities, of course. I applied for work experience at NME magazine - something totally different, I am aware, but this whole year is about trying things, and I would really like to try both. As you have noticed, I like writing, but I also love television as a medium, and I hope I'll have a chance to explore both.

In any case, I am more and more convinced that my future lies somewhere in the media business. I especially love that balance between education and entertainment - a thing of beauty when kept well. It is important that people get informed correctly about things that go on in the world - but information goes down a lot easier when nicely packaged. I think the BBC is very good at keeping that balance most of the time. It's something I would love to be involved in. In a way, NME tries to do the same on a smaller scale, for a different public, and through a different medium. It would be interesting to be able to compare their methods.

Anyway, that's the dream scenario. Let's see how it goes! The search continues.

A little Christmas DIY

Far from wanting to make this another DIY/lifestyle blog, I still wanted to share this with you: such a great way to wrap Christmas presents responsibly! I used a Starbucks takeaway bag here but I'm sure there's other pretty bags out there you could use. Most of all, it's eco-friendly: all those gift wraps just land in the garbage can anyway, so why not save money and save trees at once? Plus, you can easily personalize your presents as I did (and believe me, I really can't draw, so if I can do this anyone can). Triple win!

I also did a version with a Starbucks takeaway cup, but I forgot to take a picture. Just make sure you wash it well! I covered it with a piece of paper and a rubber band, like those old jam jars. It looked pretty sweet! If you are annoyed by the logo, you can easily cover that by sticking a piece of paper on top of it and writing a personal message on it. The people I have tried it with loved it so far!

Fast forward

Yes, I should probably have put up a blog post neatly every week of my internship, to update you on my progress and all that, but time flies and I procrastinate, and here we are, on Christmas Eve, on my second-to-last day of work at the opera house. So I'll need to do a retrospect post instead.

Did it go well? I think it all went fairly well, even though it was probably not the best time to do an internship here (a lot of stressed people, the passing away of a superior of our service, this is not a place to go into great detail but it was not the easiest time for sure). We had our good and our bad times, the opera house and I, but that's how it goes I guess.

Did you learn a lot? Yes. I would say I learned a lot about the working world, life as a full-time employee, the way a big company and a cultural institution is organised, and what it takes to keep it running. I've seen a lot of good things, I've seen quite a few things I don't agree with, and I've seen many different reactions to all those things. I mainly gained a lot of insights through working here, and that is the most important thing I've learned. When it comes to practical skills, the actual job content, I can't say I've learned such a great deal there. I did get to improve my French and my organisational skills - but I could already write, use social media, and answer a phone before I came here. Overall, I think the insights I gained and the experience I've built are the most valuable things I will take away from La Monnaie.

Was it worth it? Yes, I think it was worth it. I am glad I got to work at La Monnaie, I got to know the opera house from the inside, I got to know Brussels, I got to know a lot of people.

Would I do it again? I would do it again with what I know now, only maybe a little shorter.

So have you found your dream job? No. I love communication, but I've found out I hate promotion. That thin line between trying to help people by offering them information, or trying to make them buy your product by throwing information at them, is one I've found I do not like to cross. Promotion gives me headaches.

And so the journey continues. Expect an update about my next job search soon!

PS. Sorry for staying vague about this whole chunk of time that's just passed. I promise I'll do better on my next job!

Beginner's luck

Indeed, I got hired at the opera house. I could never have guessed that my first job application ever would be so easy, but it was. I was quite nervous for the interview, but it went very smoothly - no weird questions to test my knowledge about the opera house, and even speaking French went surprisingly well after not speaking it at all for three years.

Also, my interviewers were not exactly intimidating (by which I mean nothing bad) seeing as they were two nice girls of barely a few years older than me (I would later find out that they were indeed 26 and 27 or thereabouts). I was supposed to go for a second interview with the head of department a while later, but that got cancelled and I just got hired right away. (Looking back I am glad it did get cancelled, as the head of department is actually a French lady, and it would have been a lot more stressful to have to do everything in French rather than switching between that and Dutch).

So I got hired, for a four-month period, September to December. This meant I could start my summer holidays without having to be stressed about finding a job. And of course I was very excited to find out what the opera house would be like. What is also very convenient, is that I could make the internship count for a number of ECTS for a Cutural Studies master's degree. I was not planning to really do the degree this year, but by doing the internship already, I could keep the official status of 'student', which makes things a lot easier when it comes to administration and all that jazz.

Sounds like a lot of beginner's luck all at once, right? I think so too. Must be good karma. I hope it's not all downhill from here for the rest of the year.

Easy does it

So, the decision had been made, I had come back home, and exams had just begun. The plan was to do a paid but irrelevant summer job (going on an Erasmus is not good for the funds, believe me) while looking out for relevant internships and placements starting from September. But first of all there were exams and a final paper to be completed. I was not on the lookout yet at all.

Plans about what to apply for were quite vague; I knew I would like to try something in media or journalism, and possibly also in a cultural sector. I knew I would love to find something abroad again, preferably in the UK or Ireland. My expectations, I think, were realistic: I expected the process of applying to be long and stressful, even more so because I'd never applied for a job before - except for some student jobs, but that can hardly be called applying at all. I believed it would be very hard to find a job in the fields I was aiming at, since they are notoriously popular and usually pretty saturated. And I predicted that I would probably not get paid for the kind of jobs that really interested me.

I was wrong on most points.

By mere chance, I stumbled upon an ad on my university website for an internship at La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels. The internship was at the Promotion & Communication department, it was unpaid (at least I was right about that part) and three-month-long starting from September. It seemed like a perfect opportunity, in short. I did not hesitate long and started working on an application (even though I still had a couple of exams to get through; the opera house would close over the summer holidays, and it was mid-June by this time).

Although I put quite some effort into it, looking back I would say I was not very well prepared - my CV, for one, was a little messy (no wonder, there was nothing very interesting to put on it except for the likely prospect of a BA degree), and my cover letter was written purely on intuition. (I can see that now, having just spent quite a while researching CV's and cover letters.)

But I just went ahead and applied anyway. I had a lot of excitement and little to lose; and apparently, sometimes that's enough.

And so it begins

First of all, this blog comes way too late. I'm aware of that. I should have started it when I started my year-of-experiences - not five months later. Granted. I shall start it now however, if it please you.

When I was in Galway on Erasmus exchange, I was very, very happy. It took me a while to find out why exactly, but I know now: I just love new experiences. Landing in a situation where everything and everyone is new, and where you have to find your way around and discover everything for the first time, is simply the best thing on earth for me. Contradictorily, it feels like a natural habitat. So Galway was the best time of my life so far.

Quite soon, though, I also started realizing that coming back to Belgium and readopting all the old patterns and habits would be very unpleasant. A vague idea started to take root in my mind. Luckily, I voiced those vague ideas to a friend with a lot of life experience quite early. She thought the idea, however vague, was BRILLIANT (thank you Kathleen). From that moment on, the idea was no longer all that vague, and I had decided.

You need to know that in Belgium, most people consider a bachelor's and a master's degree as one single unit, not two separate things in which the second is optional. The general idea is that a bachelor's degree alone is useless and will not get you anywhere - that it is, in fact, a waste of three years of your life to do only that bachelor's degree without adding a master's. I was not aware of how strongly rooted that idea is here. Once I had made my decision, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me, and like the best decision I could ever have made.

Unfortunately, this could not be said of most other people.

Luckily I have amazing parents who have a lot of confidence in me, and who always support me to the maximum. I also have a lot of amazing friends - some who were very enthusiastic about my scheme, some who did not like it at all. Fair enough. But then there were all those other people - acquaintances, family, new people I met who, of course, would ask what I do in life. Most of those (luckily not all of them) just pretty much think that I'm out of my mind, and that it's a disgrace my parents are letting me do this. I find this odd. I never even asked my parents, I told them. I feel that by now I'm quite capable of making my own informed decisions. (Which does not lessen my gratitude to my parents for being supportive.)

Oh, well. The decision was made and doubts about my sanity are not going to make me change my mind. It was the best thing I could do for myself at this point in my life. I'd rather spend a year doing many different things to help me find out what I really want to do in life, than spend a year doing a master's degree which doesn't interest me too much at the moment and of which I have no idea if it will lead me anywhere in particular. People tell me I will never find a 'proper' job if I don't have that master's degree. They may be proven right at some point. But if so, nothing stops me from getting that degree after all. It's not like I'm embarking on some irreversible journey into the great nothing. (Also, their ideas of what a 'proper' job is might just differ from mine. Just maybe.)

One thing I know for sure is that this will never be a wasted year. I will learn so much - I am learning so much. I would even dare to argue I'm learning more, or at least things more useful, than I would when doing that inevitable master's degree.

And so it began.

PS. Comments are most welcome at any time. Telling me I'm insane is fine too.